Finance capital in papal robes : a challenge

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FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

A Challenge!

By N. Bukharin.

{Translated from the Russian by Moissaye J. Olgin)

It is now the thirteenth year since the toiling masses of
the Soviet land, with the workers vanguard in the front line,
have been strenuously defending the red frontiers and build-
ing a new life. At the great divide, which the heroic prole-
tarian army is now crossing in a terrific strain the masses
of city and village are making immense sacrifices: the last
pennies are being spent on the feverish, impetuous building
program; unbelievable efforts are being made to lay down
for future centuries the most powerful, rock-bottom founda-
tion of the gigantic and harmonious structure of Commun-
ism: men and women, who having thrown off the power of
landlords and the power of capital, prefer to suffer dire need
ai present, giving away the precious juices of their lives
today, if only they can substitute for, the antiquated, delapi-
dated uncouth and moth-eaten technique of wooden imple-
ments a splendid metallic system of machines with which
tomorrow it will be easier to work, with which it will be
possible to produce infinitely more, infinitely better, to live a
cleaner, sunnier, and more reasoned life. And just now,
when the toiling masses, in a tremendous effort, straining
all their muscles to the utmost, are modeling the heavy blocks
of their present, out of which they build their future ; when,
notwithstanding partial failures and breaches in the front,
they have moved far ahead in the all-absorbing work; just
now the mad bacchanal of our enemies abroad has been let
loose. Roman cardinals and Georgian counterfeiters ; gen-
erals of various staffs and Popes of various gods and
churches; English lords and French usurers; American
moneybags and Bishops of the Anglican church; Washing-
ton Senators and Swedish dukes; professors and courtesans:
police sleuths and the Holy Pope of Rome himself, the vicar
of the apostles and of God, the infallible prince of the
church— all of them preach a "true spiritual crusade of civ-
ilization against barbarism," as the organ of the fascist cut-

+ FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

throats The Popolo di Roma sanctimoniously declares with
a bestial smacking of lips. How well it becames the fascists,
to assume that noble pose !

411 this counter-revolutionary cancan; all this cannibal-
istic howl of lay and church hyenas, accompanied by the
jingle of spurs, the clanking of sabres, and the tinkle of
censors, is a "moral" preparation for an attack on the U. S.
S R. ' Arise against the Bolshevik land, ye princes, kings
and lords ! Out with the cash, ye enlightened bankers and
industrialists ! Prepare the dynamite, ye master of the mili-
tary craft! The counterfeiters are in danger! Oil is in
danger! The markets are in danger 1 Capitalist property
is in danger! God is in danger!

Honorable ladies and honorable gentlemen ! You will not
frighten us with your howl. And do not blame us if we un-
cover before the masses of the people your real face and the
brutal glint of your rapacious teeth. You do not wish to
remove the very pleasant masks from your far-from pleas-
ant faces ? Then do not complain if we tear them off and
if (where the mask has stuck) your well-cared- for skin will

suffer in spots.

Z * * *

In commenting upon the manifesto of Holy Pious, a mis-
erable sheet bearing the name of Rigasche Rundschau l char-
acterizes this foolishly talkative and at the same time mili-
tary document as the "long looked- for great offensive of the
Catholic Church against heathen Bolshevism and Bolshevik
Russia." 3 The offensive was started with a general attack
along the whole front by this very declaration of war, al-
though the feeble hand of the militant pontiff was moved b>
powers far more potent than the living archeological Roman
rarity taken by itself'. The most Christian father, don't
vou see, is deeply aggrieved over the "persecution of re-
ligion" in the U. S. $\ R. He reminds us that as early as
1922, before the Genoa Conference, he proposed to all pow-
ers there represented to confront the Soviet Government
with a general declaration, with an ultimatum to the effect

iNo. 33, February 10, 1930.

2 Lang erwartde grbisi Offensive der KatkoUschcn Kirche gegen den
fu-idwschen Bohchezvismus tmd gegen bolscheujistsches Russland.

^^^^^^™ ... i.. , i i p p j i . il i ipi i ii"! ^rrB i raiw^ ^ n W M f J Ij I MUWp i

FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES 5

that it would 'be recognized only under conditions oi^rp.
soect for the conscience, the freedom of worship and the
freedom of church property" ("il Hspetto delle con-scxenze,
Id liberta dei culti edei beni delta chiesa" s) . Alas, the pow-
ers have not harkened to me, he mourns. They preterred
the earthly to the heavenly. And now, he says, the hour of
retribution has come. Assiduously picking up from the
pages of the malicious yellbw'press the invented bloody ^hor-
rors with which the newspaper scoundrels feed their Philis-
tine herds ad nauseam, the Pope now draws the balance
sheets blessing; his warriors, cursing the "persecutors of re-
ligion" and rising to veritably dizzy heights of. hysterical
pathos. Why shouldn't" he ! "The organizers of the atheist
campaign and of the anti-religious front," he says, wish
first of all, to pervert the youth {pervertier la gioventa), us-
ing its innocence and its lack of information." Instead of
educating the youth in the spirit of science and civilization,
in the spirit of honesty and justice, which "cannot thrive and
blossom without religion," these bandits organize the youth
in godless associations spreading "moral, cultural and even
economic decadence," conducting an anti-humane propa-
ganda, infecting it with all the vices, with pernicious mate-
rialism, forcing children to report on their fathers, organiz-
ing blasphemous carnivals, compelling men and women to
denounce their religion under threat of being deprived of
bread cards, dwellings, and so on and so forth.

Here the Pope's fantasy makes a really divine sweep: he
invents such horrors as would "make your hair stand up."
The logical result of all this smeariness, the bottom line of
the frightful document, is a loud appeal supposed to soUnd
like the trumpet call of the apocalyptic archangel, the archi-
strategus, the warrior, the judge, who will actually "bust
up" this nest of materialistic infection, this red monster of a
country where there are neither kings nor princes, and where
even the kulkas feel as if they Were on hot coals.

Following the rules of European civilization, we shall first
of all request the papal gentleman to present his documents

*StaiHpi } February 9, 1930.

6 FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

so that his identity may be established^ Your papers, mon-
seignor, your historical papers?

At the fountain-head of papal magnificence, which has
passed through various phases of development, there is to
be found a series of dirty and rascally forgeries. Under
Pope Stephanus II, King Pippin the Short, for military aid
rendered by the Prince of the Church against the Lom-
bards, gave him the "papal territory." Immediately a forged
document was contrived which transformed this transaction,
both commercial and bloody, into a "gift of Constantine the
Great." This is as far as the question of the origin of papal
landed property is concerned. In the middle of the ninth
century a bundle of forged documents made its appearance,
and was circulated with the greatest ardour, including the
so-called "pseudo-Isidore's decretals/ Those were collec-
tions of forged decisions which asserted that the Pope was
no more nor less than the "head of the whole world" (Caput
iotius orbis). The brazen forgery was exposed as a forgery.
In the history of' the papacy, however, it is a "sacred doc-
ument. " This is as far as the question of the historical pass-
port of the papal gentleman is concerned.

Thus, at the very, origin of papal existence, there is blood
and filth , war and forgery, which cast their lurid light over
all the subsequent development of this black institution.

The papacy, whose, herald is the most reverend warrior
of the Holy See, possesses not only timely documents pulsat-,
ing with current problems. The holy fathers have also
created for themselves an all-embracing scholastic theory,
whose rust-eaten iron hoops cramp the unhappy brains of
all servitors of the Catholic Church. This theory was for-
mulated as early as the end of the thirteenth century by the
famous Thomas Aquinas, who wrote the "Encyclopedia of
Theology" ("Sumtna theologize"). Even in the encyclical
of Pope Leo XIII, dated August 4th, 1879, the study of
Thomas Aquinas was demanded as a duty of the servitors
of the Church. This is the most fully elaborated theoretical
program of papacy. What, then, do we find in this learned
encyclopedia on the subject of tolerance, freedom, of con-
science and other lovely things which the now living Pius
boasts ? "Heresy is a sin for which the guilty one must not
only be excommunicated from the church, but also di-m-

FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES 7

mated from this world by death." This is the chief com-
mandment of papacy. Of course, the arms of the popes
have now been shortened ; their former grandeur has petered
out; their peacock's train has been plucked by old Dame
History quite considerably. But when this dried-up vampire
again tries to spread its talons, when it leans on the still
powerful forces of the imperialist murders; when it puts
on the appearance of tolerance, we must recall its execution-
ist commandment: a heretic (f. e. he who is not a slave of
the Pope) must be "eliminated from this world by death!'*

Here, as elsewhere, the **deed" preceded the "word." It
seems that the memory of Pope Pius XI becomes con-
veniently blank when dealing with the "theory and practice"
of the Holy See itself. Only a sanctimonious liar, shot
through with hypocrisy from the top of his head to the tips
of his toes, can step forth with at once oily and slanderous
missives like the latest production of the Pope when he, him-
self, drags behind his back a burden of monstrous crimes:
all this crunching of bones, moaning of the agonized, odor
of burning human flesh, stench and smoke of the pyres,
groans of the tortured, they will cry to heaven for ever and
ever! They will not escape the implacable historic judg-
ment — all these Popes, with their inquisition, their Jesuits,
their "crusades," the savage mass extermination of the "her-
etics," their greed, .perversity, venality, intrigues — no, they
will not escape!

Your princely holiness ! Won't you please recall the deci-
sion of your Rheims Council of 1157, when, following the
"most humane," "most tolerant," "most Christian" rule,
with all due "respect to freedom of conscience," the faces
of the heretics were to be branded with hot irons f Won't
you please recall a similar decision of your most holy 'Coun-
cil of Oxford of 1 1 66? Won't you recall the decisions of
the Lateran Council of n 78, when a "crusade" was pro-
claimed (in 11S1) against all the "enemies of the church"
and when the papal beast absolved the people of all sins for
two years to come for the mass extermination of the "her-
etics"? Won't you recall the so-called "Eta'blissements" of
Ludwig the Holy (1270) with the proviso condemning "her-
etics" to be burned alive? Won't you recall the legislation
of King Frederick II (Edicts of 1220-1239) based on the

8 FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

decisions of the Lateran Council, a legislation which _ out-
lawed the heretics, which condemned all "accomplices,"
"defenders" and "interceders" to life-long exile, and which
subjected their property to confiscation and their houses to
barbarous destruction? Won't you recall the decision of
the Narbonne Council of 1229, and of 1 the Albi Council,
according to which all boys above fourteen and all girls
above twelve were obliged to inform on each and every one,
[It is from here, holy Father, that your slanderous lies
about the Soviet land and our youth spring!) Won't you
recall, you hypocritical old fellow, the decisions of the •.Nar-
bonne Council of 1244, according to which a lay. judge,
delaying the execution of a heretic, was himself liable to
execution? Won't you recall the decision of the Constance
Council (1418), which burned John Huss and which decided
to "punish with fire," i, e. to burn at the stake, all the Huss-
ites ( "puniantur ad ignem").!

The Catholic Church traversed the length and breadth of
almost all of Europe with fire and sword. It, moreover,
spread its tentacles over the whole world; it swept like a
swarm of voracious locusts, like an instigator of. colonial'
bestialities, like a veritable murderer of peoples, the more
hideous because it covered up the bloody orgies of' trading
capital with the words "love and mercy." Why. such
malicious militancy? The explanation is very simple. The
most holy fathers fought with fire and sword against the
"heresy" because — to use the expression of a very moderate
and very well-meaning historian of the Inquisition, not a
Bolshevik by any means, but a virtuous American book-
seller, Henry Charles Lea— "the. ruling classes, with a few
insignificant exceptions, took almost no part in the origin
of heresy. 1 "* The heretics came from the lower strata of
the population; from among the peasants, the artisans, the
journeymen, the poor. The best, most courageous, and
most noble representatives of these strata sometimes almost
touched upon Communist ideas ; they went bravely to the
stake, and their heroic death will always shine as a bright
torch for true, real humanity. On the other hand, the papal

^Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages.
Quotation re-translated from Russian.

FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES 9

jackals, from the petty servants of the Inquisition, the spies,
the -handy men, the informers, the "bravi," to the "great
Inquisitors" and "generals" of the Jesuit order, the bishops
and the popes themselves, will remain in the hearts of' hu-
manity as a hideous remembrance of the bestiality of historic
barbarism. It is not in vain that one of the largest "heretic"
sects was called "Cathars" ("the pure ones"), "good peo-
ple" ("boni homines"), whereas the papal sleuths of all
ranks ' were called "Cazzagazzari" ("hunters after the

Cathars")' . ,

The "holy Inquisition/' this powerful instrument m the

hands of the popes, whose very name has become a hateful
word of abuse, developed an elaborate system of moral and
physical torture: "trial by water," the rack, the quartering,
the burning at the stake (auto da fe) ; the encircling of the
victim's neck with a bag of powder (technical perfection
after the invention of powder), i. e. the combination of the
stake and the explosion; the iron, steel and wooden contrap-
tions required for this purpose — what a gloomy and bloody
depravity breathes from all these pious deeds of the humble
fathers of the Church! And now the Pope steps forth as
a fighter for the "freedom of conscience." , Now he sheds
crocodile tears over the non-existent atrocities in ."Russia,"
while every stone of the Roman pavements, the fields and
the cities of France, Spain, Italy, Germany and a series of
other places are saturated with the blood that was shed by
the popes, blackened by the smoke of the pyres and sub-
merged in the moral stupor created by the poisonous vapors
of the Catholic Church! Without blushing to the very roots
of his hair, the Pope dares to defend "culture and civiliza-
tion," to defend science— he, the commander and the pontiff
of an organization that burned Giordano Bruno at the
stake, that tortured Campanula to death, that put the great
Galileo behind iron bars, that throttled everything and every-
body standing in the way of Roman domination !

The Jesuit order, this select cohort of the "militant
church" ("ecclesiae militantis"), was, after the Inquisition,
the most important instrument of papal policy. It crept in
everywhere, from the government to the schools. At one
time it spread its behind-the-scenes power over all the coun-
tries of the world. : But hasn't the very nmne "Jesuit"

10 FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

5 I-L Boehmer, The Jesuits, p- 163 Russian edition of 1913 (There is a
"revised' English translation published by the Castle Press in Philadelphia
(1928) from which the above sentence was omitted, — Translator.

become a word of shame, an abusive appellation, a despised
name? A historian of Jesuitism, a man quite benevolently
disposed towards it, Mr. H. Boehmer, discloses the social
essence of the order when he says: "Its ranks begin to be
filled almost exclusively with representatives of the aristoc-
racy of power, wealth and education; it is natural that
among those select (N. B.!) elements of society the order
finds its main support . . . The people do not want it any-
where, although, wherever the order has already rooted
itself', they easily allow themselves to be kept in swaddling
clothes." 6 These "swaddling clothes" were often of such
a nature that the sons of the people were lifted to the
ceiling on pulleys, with limbs pulled apart ; the "select ele-
ments of society," the "aristocracy of power, wealth and
education " know how to deal with the "mob" ! But while
the "Society of Jesus," in its' relations to the "outside
world," was marching hand in hand with the "most holy
Inquisition,' marking the limits of its religious tolerance
by burning the "heretics" at the stake, it developed at the
hands of its theoreticians, in the first place its founder,
Ignatius Loyola, a peculiar theory of internal relations.
These theoreticians elevated the very ideology of prostitution
and unprincipled servility to the heights of an ideological
principle. They built up an organization whose members
considered the repudiation of their own principles as thetr
highest virtue and their, so to speak, moral duty. It has been
correctly said that there isn't a meanness in the world which
would not find for itself an ideological justification. The
king of the Jesuits, Loyola, developed a whole theory of
subordination, of "cadaver discipline" ; every member of the
order was supposed to obey his siiperior "like a corpse which
could be turned in all directions/ 3 like a stick which follows
every movement, like a ball of wax which could be changed
and "extended in all directions." , . . This corpse is charac-
terized by three degrees of perfection: subordination by
action, subordination of the will, subordination of the intel-
lect. When the last degree is reached, when the man sub-

-- . ,.:.■ .:. .

FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

1.1

stitutes naked subordination for intellect, renouncing all his
convictions, then you have a hundred per cent Jesuit. This
universal "cadaverization," as the organizational and ideolog-
ical principle of the order, 'brought about a situation where
even the Jesuits themselves began to revolt. By the end of
the sixteenth century, one of the theoreticians of this revolt,
Padre Juan Mariana, had the following to say in his book,
On the Ailments of the Society of Jesus, about the in-
ternal situation of' the order : "The monarchy (meaning
the monarchy inside the order N. B.) destroys us, not be-
cause it is a monarchy* but because it is not sufficiently
limited. It is a mad boar which devastates everything in
its way/ None the: less, the "mad boar" continued its devas-
tating work, for, with few exceptions, there was sitting on
the .papal throne another "mad boar" with fangs even larger
than those of the " praepositus generalise of the Jesuit order !
No wonder that, under the rule of such "unprincipled prin-
iciples," deception, trickery, fraud, use of dagger, poison,
perfidy, the refined system of. lies called casuistry, sadistic
tortures at hearings, double-dealing — all these and many
other things, blossomed luxuriantly in the vineyards of the
Lord.

This spiritual prostitution, this ideology of perfidious cas-
tratoes and homosexual! sts, this filth, you, holy Pius, call
"culture and civilization"?

It is the Bolsheviks, don't you see* who demoralized the
youth when they fight the idea that wine is transformed into
God's blood to be sipped from golden bowls after one has
tasted of God's flesh, obtained in like manner from bread.

It is the Bolsheviks who fight against science when they »
instead of the mysteries of the transformation of bread and
wine into blood and flesh, insist on the periodical system
of Mendeleyev or the theory of electrons.

And it is, apparently, the Roman popes and inquisitors
who are very much concerned about science when they burn
the Brunos.

It is the Bolsheviks who demoralize the youth when they
rouse it to fight against medieval superstition. And it is
the Roman popes and the Jesuits who "educate" the youth
through general cadaverization and the doctrine of the infal-
libility of the Roman dalai-lamas. Isn't it so, beatific old

12

FINANCE CAPITA!; IN: PAJ^KOBES

fellow? Isn't it so, oh, ye mummy- on the throne, ye dry
rot ^f our time, still infecting the world -with your stinking

P ThrM«s inflict vices upon the youth , Their chief
-vice" is materialism, while honesty and justice cannot thrive
without religion. This is how the papa l'*****^
■We have already seen what the "honesty and justice ot
the%apal Curia is worth. But it is not good for ?ms to
nenSon vices. For history cannot record a "story" more
Ml of vice than the "story" of the respected Roman shep-
herds. Here, too, gentleman accuser, you will be paid back

* h mmmi^i our journey through this .realm with a few
general ideas advanced Iby papal theory We *us encounter
■the theory of the "treasury of good deeds ( thesauri
bonorum operumT) of Christ and. his saints A truly charm-
ing theory, indeed. Christ and his saints .have accumula ed
a heap of good deeds the key to which is m the «||fe
Pope. The Pope, it appears, is in possession of a perpetual
current account: he values thesurntotal of the : good deeds
in gold and balances them with the sins of- the flock, also
valued in gold .but with the minus sign. If the sinner
wishes to etneel his sins, he pays the Pope a fee of so and
so many ducats, and for this price the Pope dis penses from
the "treasury" a corresponding amount of good deeds which
cancel the culprit's sins. This commercial transaction, where
the ?ood deeds of Christ are being weighed on the scales
of an avaricious usurer, and where the Pope plays the part
of an enterprising dealer/expressed itself m the widespread
practice of the so-called indulgences— documents abso vmg
sins The Pope's clerks and agents trade in these docu-
ments. Central and local offices, traveling agents, hideous
commercial dealings, robberies, indulgences of the second
order, forged indulgences, speculation— isnt this one of the
most outrageous of all outrageous pictures?. And isnt this
the work of the Why papal hands? Chnsts' deeds were
being sold. The rich bought themselves free of sms.
Bishoos' posts were being sold. Even the "mysteries, the
most mystol, the most *hoiy» in the Christian cult were
being sold. Are vou not acquainted, oh holy man, with the
institution of "ablato," a fee without which the believer at

FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

13

one time could have no communion? Are you not ac-
quainted with the expression of Peter Cantor } who said that
the priests were worse than Judas Iscariot, who sold Christ's
body for thirty pieces of silver, for, as he said: "They sell
him thirty times a day . . . for one silver piece"? Are you
not acquainted with the simony? Have you forgotten about
the neptism, the practice of appointing as bishops the pope's
relatives, depraved and perverted youngsters, the laughing
stock of the streets, appointed only because they were the
dbjects of the pope's licentious desires? Do you not know
that it was papal Rome which was the breeding ground of
prostitution and that, to cite one instance, the 1490 statistics,
counted among one hundred thousand inhabitants of the city
something like seven thousand "puellae publicae" ("public
girls") ? Wasn't it in papal Avignon that the courtesan, the
type of the refined court prostitute, made her appearance?
Wasn't it the papal court in Avignon that was spoken of as
having "academies des femmes amiables" (" academies of
lovable women"), of women whose names are known to his-
torians? Do you not know the hired cocottes, who admin-
istered to the refined needs of the Popes, Sixtus IV, Alex-
ander VI and Leo X? Was it not the holy father Paulus II
(1464- 147 1 ) who introduced the bacchanal as a papal court
custom? Have you not heard anything about the famous
Later an carnival "of Pope Leo X.on April nth, 151 3, when
one day only, cost one hundred thousand ducats, when all
self-indulgence, all arts, all pleasures, all vices, all sensuality,
all luxury, were mobilized for the holy (ha, ha, ha!) prince
of the church? 8 Has anybody repudiated the fiery lines of
the famous contemporary, the humanist, ZJlrkh von Hutten,
who wrote in his "Vadiscus, or the Roman Trinity" :

"Vadiscus added: Three things are often to be met with
in Rome: sensuous pleasures, luxurious raiments, and
hauteur.

Ernhold: Yes! All these things are in vogue there. In
Rome, however, they not only indulge in sensuous pleasures,
but they also strive to vary them, to invent unusual, even
monstrous, ways of attaining pleasure, so that the ancient
spintriae are nothing in comparison with them. As a matter

c Weiner Lombart, Luxus and Kapitalismus.

14 FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

of fact, they look with contempt on the simple, sensuous
pleasures, calling them, peasant-like and crude. This is why
there are pleasures in Rome of which we are ashamed to
speak.

"... Vadiscus says: This is why three things are in
great abundance in Rome : antiques, poison, and ruins. To
which I [L e. Hutten, N. B.] added: Three things have been
banished from there: simplicity, moderation, and chastity.
[There followed triads : Three things are being dealt with
in Rome: Christ, priest's positions, and women. . . . Three
things have a particularly high value in Rome : woman's
beauty, excellent horses, and papal indulgences], 7

Hutten then adds : "There are three things the idle in
Rome occupy themselves with: walks, fornication, and
feasts.

"Ernhold: Indeed, they do nothing else there. For those
who are not idle, those who plan, write, flatter, aspire, plead,
are ibusy deceiving, lying, perjuring themselves, betraying,
robbing, stealing, adulterating, seducing." 8

And then especially about the popes themselves:

"If they [the popes, N. B.] murder the soul, how can they
be called the vicars of Christ ? Wherein do their institutions
appear similar to the institutions of Christ? He once said,
turning to Peter: 'Shepherd my Iambs/ and what do the
popes do ? Do they not reduce to starvation the Christians
who are exhausted by papal robbery ? Do they not skin
them? When they shear their flock, do they not cut them
to the flesh?" 9

And finally, here is a general characteristic of the papal
church:

This church no doubt consists of thieves, sacrilegists,
deceivers, notaries, bishops guilty of simony, and of those
flattering the Roman high priest — it consists of such only.
They [the popes N. B.] do not refuse lay power the way
Peter did, but they wage land and sea wars for kingdoms

7 Ulrich von Hutten, Collected Works (in German and Latin), Lelpsic,
1925, Vol. V, Vadisens oder die romische Dreifaltig-keit, pp. 316 ff.
HbU.
*Ibid,

FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES 15

and power, arousing the subjects against their rulers, shed-
ding blood and poisoning the people. 10

Such is the real, the actual face of the Holy See. But
this picture is far from enumerating all the features of the
moral and political physiognomy of papacy.

The popes were, first of all, greedy and bloody conquerors,
who shrank before no means for crushing their, enemies and
half-friends. The history of papacy is the history of endless
wars, conspiracies, diplomatic deceptions, perfidious treach-
eries, secret murders, numberless pillaging expeditions. This
feudal baron, prince, emperor, strove incessantly to enlarge
his lands; the "holy slogans" of fighting for the Christian
faith, fighting against heresies, fighting for the word of
truth, etc., etc., were only an ugly shield hiding very pro-
saic aims. The growing demands of the popes, the reaching
out of their grabbing hands, was accompanied by a simul-
taneous creation of ever new theories which claimed, "in true
Christian spirit/' ever greater degrees of power for the
Roman pontiff. The fight against heresy was accompanied
by confiscations . . . in favor of the pope. The fight against
the "enemy of the church" generally rounded out the pope's
possessions. The fights against the princes Who fretted
under the unusual avarice of the Holy See, extended the
landed possessions of the pope in case of victory. The fight
for the "holy land," the fight for colonies .(under the slogan
of fighting for the Christian faith) widened the taxing area
of the pope. All this was made law by the theory of the
specifically privileged position of the Roman pontiff. Pil-
laging, war, banditry, were smeared with the rich ointment
of heavenly hliss, which feat could be easily accomplished
in view of the fact that the keys to the little chest contain-
ing that bliss was in the hands of the same holy father.

Already Gregorius VII (1073- 1085) advanced the thesis
that the pope is the ruler of the whole world. He also put
that thesis into practice by compelling Henry IV after he
had been excommunicated, to travel to Canossa to have his
sins absolved. Innocentius III (1198-1216) concretized the
thesis of Gregorius VII by putting the idea of papal greed
for power into a formula saying that the lay kings were

I

16 FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

.papal vassals, whereas the pope, while not above our Lord
Jesus Christ, was certainly above all the human race. Bom- (
facius VIII declared that the pope must hold in his hands
not only the spiritual but also the worldly sword, i. e. he
elevated war, as a method of Christian influence, to the
height of a "principle/' If Pope Innocentius III had as-
serted that the election of an emperor must depend "prin-
cipialiter et finaliter" ("in principle and as a matter of final-
ity") upon the Roman Curia, the pope at the Trent Council
(1563) was placed above the world councils, and on July
iSth, 1870, on the eve of the Paris Commune, at the thresh-
old of the twentieth century, during the triumphal march
of natural sciences, the dogma of the popes* infallibility was
advanced ! True, this "dogma" was accepted at a time when
the tenacious hands of the pope had already been three-
quarters chopped off, but how characteristic are these greedy
desires of the old fellows! It .must be remembered that
they, the God anointed, turn into beasts as soon as the his-
toric situation allows them to let out their talons* . . . Arch-
bishop Peter of Blois (13th century) described the arch-
bishop's judges as vipers "exceeding snakes and basilisks in
malice." Hildeber o£ Manassa (cf. Lea, /. c.) declared
about the papal dignitaries: "They comprehended like a
stone; they judged like a log; they ignited like fires; they
are shrewd like a fox; they are proud like an ox; they
are voracious like a minotaur."

Greedy, exceedingly ambitious and vain, the popes fought
incessant wars not only against the "foreign" enemies and
not only against the "heretics/* but also against their own
vassals, the bishops. Moreover, there were periods in his-
tory when several popes fought each other with the utmost
cruelty, with fire and sword. Thus, by the end of the four-
teenth century, there was elected in Rome one holy father,
Urbanus VI, while in Avignon another by the name of
Clement VI was elected; after this the institution of the
one and only successor of Peter continued to exist in a split
form. In 1409 the Pisa Council deposed both popes, Gre-
gorys XII and Benedictus XIII, and elected a third, Alex-
ander V, whose successor was Joannes XXIII. The Con-
stantine Council deposed all three popes and elected
Martinus V. The hideous squabbles, the monstrous pacts

FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

17

behind the scenes, led to a situation where once a clever
woman became pope.

There were among the popes not only plain criminals;
there were past masters of filthy and bloody action; there
were virtuosos of murdering from the ambush, virtuosos of
perfidy and crime. Sixtus IV (i 471 -1484) deceived his
allies, participated in secret murders, incited to wars, ex-
communicated and executed enemies, persecuting them with
a furious malice. Later his successor, Alexander IV, and
then Alexander's son, Csesar Borgia, made everybody
tremble. He was, according to the historian of 1 papacy,
Ranke, "given up to his passions and deeply stained with
blood." How Rome did tremble at his name! Csesar re-
quired gold and possessed enemies: everynight the corpses
of murdered men were found in the streets, yet, none
dared to move; for who but might fear that his own turn
would be next ? Those Whom violence could not reach were
taken off by poison.*' 11 "On the death of distinguished men,
people instantly suspected poisoning by the Pope." 12 Csesar
Borgia killed his brother and drowned the corpse in the
Tiber. He killed his brother-in-law ; he killed the favorite
of his father who hid behind his cloak — he cut his throat
'before the eyes of Alexander. There is no crime where
Csesar Borgia did not leave record-breaking figures.

And this monster, this beast worthy only of being put into
an iron cage and exhibited in cities and towns as a cruel and
malicious animal, is counted among the ranks of the glorious
predecessors of Pius XI I

Depraved and sensuous debauchees; sadistic murderers
like Csesar Borgia; wily hunters after power like Sixtus
IV; refined bon vivants to whom strangulation and rob-
bery were only a pedestal for unheard of luxury in the most
bizarre forms — like Leo X- — these were the men who deter-
mined the moral {moral 7) physiognomy of the papacy. And
now, pious Pius himself teaches us moral lessons, he appears
as a defender of morality alleged to be trampled upon by
the Bolsheviks. . . .

Yes, we trample upon the ''morality" of the pope ! Our

■ .

11 LeopoJd iron Ranke, History of the Popes, Vol* I, p. 37,

•

18 FINANCE. CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

youth, in the first place its proletarian battalions, will do
everything possible in order that the earth may never and
nozvhere produce such poisonously monstrous outcasts of
mankind as the Sixtuses, the Leos, the Csesars and the
Alexanders- The "morality" of crude strangulators, the
"morality" of sadists, the "morality" of the Jesuits, the
"morality" of the erotomaniacs who invented the adoration
of the "Virgin Mary,' 1 the "morality" of hangmen, strangu-
lators of science, the "morality" of the filthy casuists, of
the greedy usurers — oh, thrice cursed be that "morality" !

This is the "morality" of slave-holders enraged to the point
of fury; it is the "morality" of "infuriated store-keepers"
who would shrink before nothing in defense of their "own'
(stolen) possessions, in defense of the old world, which is
"oozing blood and filth" from every pore ; it is the morality
of those who would attack everything new, rob the op-
pressed, persecute and cruelly smother all the living forces
of mankind.

They have played a big game, the papal gentlemen : a world
game! Their agents, their Jesuit fathers, their missionaries,
their emissaries, roamed everywhere : they accompanied the
robbing expeditions of the Spanish and Portuguese bandits
in America and India; they penetrated Africa, China, pre-
paring colonial enslavement; they utilized every possible
method ; they directly participated in the slaughter ; they
burned and killed whole settlements of the "heathen"; they
pretended to be semi-"heathen" themselves (for instance,
Brahmins in India) in order to creep into the confidence
of people of different faiths (the dispute over the so-called
"Chinese" and "Malabar" customs) ; they lied and simu-
lated; they organized "crusades" and commercial expedi-
tions, bringing back with them hatred of the natives and
syphilis, from which several popes were among the first to rot.

From the notes of an agent of the world famous German
firm of the -Welsers, in Augusburg, one by the name of Bal-
thasar Sprenger, who participated in the Portuguese expedi-
tion of Almeda (1505), we have a colorful description of
the functional role of Christianity:

"On August 13th we arrived at the harbor of Mombassa
. . . .the natives were hostile to us . . but with the aid of

FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

19

Christ our Saviour ... . we drove them out of' their fort and
to the very city. . . With God's help, quite a number of
the heathens perished, while on our side only two were killed.
. . . We began to introduce order and to prepare for plunder
(als wir nur unser ordenung in der stat geschickt und uns
zu plendem gerust hatten) , . . we first placed guards and
watchmen and then we began to plunder and we found great
wealth which it is not possible to enumerate. Eternal grati-
tude, honor and worship to God! ... . All together we had ten
boats when we captured the city; the eleventh boat arrived
later in ^deplorable state. The name of this boat was
"Raphael." Generally speaking, the German merchants had
three boats: "Saint Hieronimus/' "Samt Raphael" and
'Saint Leongard"~zn& all of them participated in all the
expeditions and battles' ' (emphasis ours. N. B.).

Here is an excerpt from a note by Hans Mayer, written
in Portuguese about a battle with the Moors: "

"The doors were locked ; we broke them in, but the whole
place proved empty. , . . The entire city was occupied with-
out any resistance. . . . The Franciscans erected a cross
while the Admiral occupied a house next to this cross. As
to the crew, it busied itself with plundering (se meteo a
roubar) the goods and stores of this rich city."

The seas of blood shed iby the "most humble" Roman
popes are immense. The Pope wishes now to place one
more predatory gem in his tiara; he blows the horn and
calls for a new crusade. But it is not good for him to
shout about morals. The morals of the popes are monstrous.
It is not good for him to shout about science. The popes
are the strangulators of science. It is not good for him to
shout about "peoples." The popes are the hangmen of peo-
ples. At the threshold of the twentieth century, one of the
nearest predecessors of the present pope, Pius IX, in his
famous encyclical of December, 1864, took a decisive stand
against the "errors of this age"; he thundered and stormed
against placing reason above revelation, he cursed the opin-
ion that the will of the people is the highest law; he asserted
that those outside of the flock that is shepherded by the pope,
cannot hope for "salvation." He thundered against every
kind of democracy; he revealed himself such an advocate
of darkness; such an obscurantist, such a partisan of the

20 FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

Black Hundred, such a retrograd, such a hangman of
thought, reason and science that even Thiers, in his Dis-
courses on the Roman Question ("Discours sur la question
Romaine") declared that he was "sorry" that the encyclical
had been issued. And now another pope by the name of
Pius dares step forth in defense of science! You are not
yet satisfied, papal gentlemen, with the rows of corpses which
press on your conscience! You are not satisfied with your
"infallible" declarations, encyclicals, bulls, in which you
appeal against the "presumption of reason" and for "revela-
tion," i, e. for the ancient fables and old myths, corrected
and augmented by the falsifiers from among the papal
clientele ! We shall be against you and for science : for the
multiplication table as against the doctrine of the trinity;
for chemistry as against the doctrine of the holy com-
munion; for biology as against the myths of the immaculate
conception; for Darwinism as against the silly story about
Eve created from Adam's rib; for the recognition of your
perversions as against the doctrine of your infallibility; for
truth as against papal deception; for the working class of the
whole world as against capitalist slavery, and against the
defender of this slavery, the pope. Your threats are empty
incitements. The world-historic line of development lies
on our side.

It is a highly characteristic fact that there was a time
when Pius XI moderated his anti-Bolshevik passions. ^ The
secret of it was not so long ago revealed by a "civilized"
secret service man of the German General Staff, the well-
known journalist and contributor to the Berliner Tageblatt,
Mr. Paul Schaefer:

"The form of the Greek Orthodox Church," he says, "was
shattered by the 1917 Revolution. Had not the moment
arrived when the two great Christian communities, after
a thousand years old schism, could be reunited, since one
of them had apparently remained without leadership? . . .
The hope that the road to the Soviet State would prove free,
must 'be considered as the prime motive for the tolerant and
patient attiude of Pius XI towards the Bolshevist regime.
Now this hope is apparently dead and buried while the
Soviet State exists."

" - ■ - : - ■' - - ' r •

FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES 21

Hence the papal offensive. 13

But even this is not the whole story.

The papal power, in its development, has passed througn
many phases. Being a feudal organization, it amalgamated
with trading capital ; it kept the closest friendship with the
largest trading firms of the world, like the famous house
of the Fuggers. It participated, directly and indirectly, in
the piratical colonial expeditions for trade purposes; the
Catholic priestly robe, together with the Catholic cross,
accompanied the notorious killers and desperadoes of trading
capital in their expeditions and bloody adventures beyond
the seas. Papal power took a stand against the French rev-
olution and its repercussions, but Napoleon Bonaparte, who
cared little about God, made short shrift of Pope Pius VII,
arresting him, imprisoning him, forcing him to sign con-
cordats according to whch everything was radically changed ;
the Government, spitting in the face of' the popes, appointed
bishops at its own discretion. Changes in the historical
process reflected themselves more than once upon the des-
tinies of the popes. Sometimes they had a very narrow
escape, as was the case with Pope Pius IX, who shamefully
ran away from his Godly possessions in 1848. After the
period of revolution had passed, however, he returned to his
hearth, and the papal throne once more 'became a support
for the general European reaction. With the growth of the
labor movement, the Pope openly raised the banner of strug-
gle against Socialism and Communism, of struggle against
the revolutionary labor movement, thus earning more and
more the recognition of the bourgeoisie. As early as 1846
(in the encyclical, Qui pluribus) Pope Pius IX hurled him-
self against the Communists, at the same time attacking
other "secret societies." In the encyclical of 1864 (Quanta
cur a) the pope again declared war against Communism, and
in the so-called Syllabus he cursed it as a pest. Leo XIII,
in the encyclical of December 28, 1878, which is especially
devoted to "modern errors/' sharply attacks "Socialism,
Communism and nihilism," defending with every possible
means the sacred property rights of the capitalists and land-

13 Berliner TageblfiH t 1930, No. 76.

V:.— -

22 FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

owners. Papacy thus becomes one of the fundamental forces
which the bourgeoisie advances against the proletariat. In
recent times the organization of the Gatholic Church has
amalgamated with the organizations of finance capital. The
popes have long possessed banking houses, estates, industrial
enterprises. Today, even in Protestant Germany, the heavy
industry and the banks are intimately connected with the
Vatican. In Italy itself, the papacy is a large share-holder
in banks, and secretly maintains a number of institutions,
including cinemas. The Vatican knows what it is doing.
There was a time when it counteracted in every possible
way the national unification of Italy and was directly at war
against the national revolutionary battalions of Garibaldi.
Today it has formed a bloc with Mussolini, who for the
greater glory of national counter-revolution is ready to
reduce the working class to the role of working cattle housed
in a not-very -well-appointed stable. The union, of the Holy
See with the fascist clique, this revolutionary, aggressive,
thoroughly anti-proletarian arid militant counter-revolution
serves as a splendid shining symbol of the fact that the pon-
tiff and supreme ruler "of the Catholic Church has become
the chief fighter in the forefront of world counter-revolution.

The banner of the pope is the banner of capitalist counter-
revolution, the banner of oppressing the workers and the
poor of all countries, the banner of war against the workers
and peasants of the USSR, the banner of new bloody bat-
tles in the name of capital.

The people of the Union are molding one-sixth of the
earth's surface in a new way. They have raised with a
daring hand the banner of great work, great rebuilding of
our country. They have firmly decided, with the proletariat
at their head and under the leadership of its Party, to rebuild
their technique and their economy, their every-day life and
their science, to create a new sunlit life. They have over-
thrown the landowners and the capitalists. They have over-
thrown the Whites and the interventionists. They have
wiped out epidemics and famine. They are marching ahead
against the old forms of economy. They are nurturing a
new socialist industry, and they radically reorganize the life
of the village. They throw off their shoulders the ages-old
superstitions; out of the stuffy holes of superstition, witch-

FINANCE CAPITAL IN PAPAL ROBES

23

ery and quackery they step forth to the broad path of build-
ing a new socialist society where there shall be neither
capitalists nor exploitation, neither popes nor priests! This
is zuhy the popes prepare a new crusade. This is why the
entire" camp of slave-holders and ruling sharpers, specula-
tors and traders in human blood is astir.

For this very reason the great armies of the workers of
all countries, the international army of defenders of the pro-
letarian dictatorship, will take the stand against the armies
of capital and its papal Jesuits. '■

For this very reason the reactionary appeal of the Pope
and his archbishops calling for a crusade against the USSR
will be met with a revolutionary appeal of the workers of
all countries: Down with Capitalism 1 Down with the Pope
and all his archbishops !

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